Put Surface below the surface… of the ground. Bury it.

To Satya Nadella’s credit, he provided not just the answer, but the question as well. And, looked at narrowly, there were good things seen – and not seen – at Microsoft’s Surface event. Having clearly failed as a mass market device, it makes sense to focus Surface and more clearly define its use case. And, if that use case is productivity, then it also makes sense to kill Surface mini. That Nadella allegedly did just that is a great sign. Now he just needs to kill the whole line.
—Ben Thompson, It’s Time To Kill Surface

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Product

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Weekly Exhaust, The Podcast


That’s right. Your favorite contributors from Daily Exhaust—Michael Mulvey and Bryan Larrick—have taken to the digital air waves with a new podcast, Weekly Exhaust.
What is Weekly Exhaust? It’s a talk show version of what you see here. Bryan and I talk about whatever the hell we feel like talking about and we do it for about an hour, once a week. This usually includes technology news, hardware, software, shitty movies, great movies, cars, art, artists and writing to name a few topics.
We (try to) record on Friday mornings, and I usually have episodes edited and posted by Sunday night. It’s raw and we’re still figuring things out, but stick will us and I guarantee it will keep getting better with each new episode.
You can find Weekly Exhaust on iTunes and on the official Weekly Exhaust blog.
I don’t know him, but I want to give a big thank you to Dan Benjamin for generously posting his podcasting expertise on The Podcasting Handbook. I’m a big fan of Dan’s 5by5 Network.
Also, a thank you to Squarespace for making it super easy to syndicate a podcast from my Squarespace blog to iTunes (Squarespace really needs to sponsor this podcast, just a suggestion).

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Entertainment

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Jimmy

The Verge: Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine thinks Apple’s earbuds are bad:

Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine isn’t a fan of Apple’s iconic white earbuds. On stage at Code Conference minutes ago, Iovine had harsh words for the pack-ins, saying that Apple — the company he will soon work for — makes them simply “to make sure the machine [iPhone] works.” But he wasn’t done there. “You listen to Apocalypse Now, and the helicopter sounds like a mosquito,” he added.
Of course Iovine thinks Apple’s earbuds suck—because they do.
Secondly, did you listen to Jimmy talk? That’s a Brooklyn accent you’re hearing, and guys from Brooklyn don’t mince fucking works. Ya undastand?
Actually, hold on, Jimmy baby. Why the fuck are you watching Apocalypse Now on your iOS device with earbuds?!
[UPDATE: Jimmy contacted me and said he only resorts to watching great films with earbuds when he’s flying back and forth between NY & LA. I guess I’ll let it slide.]

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Product

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Tacky & Tackier

Before Samsung took over as the most prominent advertiser at Heathrow’s Terminal 5, it was Nokia that used to occupy the big billboards inside the home of British Airways. Unwilling to hand over the advertising crown with grace, the company now operating under the Microsoft Devices banner has decided to troll Samsung’s ads by sending out a set of four “Lumianauts” in search of a flight out into the Galaxy. Describing their apparent disappointment at not finding anything extraordinary at the terminal, Microsoft concludes that at least “the Lumia we have in our pockets is always out of this world.”
—Vlad Savov, Microsoft, Samsung, and the inane battle for Terminal 5
It’s shit like this that gives advertising (and the companies who pay them) a bad name.

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Advertising

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This Is How You Rant

“Double you tee eff?” you say, and start hunting for the problem. You discover that one day, some idiot decided that since another idiot decided that 1/0 should equal infinity, they could just use that as a shorthand for “Infinity” when simplifying their code. Then a non-idiot rightly decided that this was idiotic, which is what the original idiot should have decided, but since he didn’t, the non-idiot decided to be a dick and make this a failing error in his new compiler. Then he decided he wasn’t going to tell anyone that this was an error, because he’s a dick, and now all your snowflakes are urine and you can’t even find the cat.
—Peter Welch, Programming Sucks
[I’m not a programmer/developer, but I know enough to know this blog post is golden. Wow.]

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Technology

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Surface 3 Vs Macbook Air

I’m a little confused.
A 12-inch Surface Pro 3 with 512GB of storage and an Intel i7 core costs $1,949.00 (shit, no wonder they aren’t competing against iPads). If you want a keyboard—which Microsoft insists you need to make the most of the device—the price is $2079.00:

A 13-inch MacBook Air with a dual i7 core, 4GB of RAM and 512GB of Flash Storage costs $1,649.00:

So, to be clear, Microsoft is marketing a device to replace your laptop that costs more than a better-performing Macbook Air, but it costs more and doesn’t include a keyboard.
What was that about Apple products costing a premium over their Windows rivals?
Keep up the great work, Microsoft.

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Technology

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